The coming battlefield will not be about ideology or faith. It will not be about dogmas, doctrines or denominations. It will not be about Greek, Hebrew, the tongues of men or of angels. It will not be about whether we worship in Jerusalem, Samaria, Canterbury or Rome. It will not relate to the full moon, the sun, the seasons or the time of day. Future battle lines will be drawn around one subject, the eternal word of God: Jesus the light of the world.
For all our original thought and the initiatives that have characterized church life through the ages, our wood, hay and stubble will all be tried in the fires of tribulation. From the flames will emerge the timeless gold, silver and precious stones of a refined and pure faith that is, was and always will be built on the rock of ages.
All our structures will stumble, but Christ, the son over His own house, will sustain that which is founded in Him.
He is the Chief Cornerstone that the builders rejected. It is not patterns or concepts that sustain us, but the revelation of Christ as the son of God. Our grasp of His divinity has changed our lives and will yet lift us from the utmost to utmost. He alone sustains His people in the face of every contradiction. Jesus stood in the heart of darkness and the seat of paganism to say, “on this rock, of revelation, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”.
It saddens me that the Pentecostals so emphasized the Holy Spirit that Jesus became a symbol. It saddens me that orthodoxy, in trying to rationalize Pentecostalism, compromised the power of the Spirit to deepen our faith in Christ. It also saddens me that in my own life struggles, I have at times forgotten who it is that walks beside me to bring me to glory.
In the coming battlefields, men will ask again, who is this? The manna of Moses had a similar inference, yet they were fed for forty years by a “what is this?” The new world order will not be centered around a system or a logic, but a person: the counterfeit of Christ. That is because, unlike the church, Satan and his hoards do believe in Jesus and tremble at the name. They know He is the key to our strength and faith. That is why they will tolerate almost anything short of a belief in the man Christ Jesus. Thus the final battlefield will once and for all answer that great cry, declaring to all “He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God”.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ http://www.4u2live.net/
Image Source: Brian Jekel at http://www.picturesofjesus4you.com/images/baptism_of_christ_jekel.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment